


History

by gogollescent



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6504214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A maid from Ges Vorrutyer's household fails to make an important connection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History

“Hey, hey,” someone said, shaking her shoulder. “Up and at ‘em, eh, Marie? Though I’m sorry to roust you.”

Lord Aral. Friendliness and the hangover aged his eyes; he might have been grinning down at snow-glare, not a girl. She sat up. He let go of her shoulder, reached to stroke flat some flipped-up crest of hair—and memory struck from behind, seeming to pound on the small of her back. Or that was something else. She ached all over.

But he was in worse shape than she was, poor man, that split black lip, that smile. He wasn’t touching her anywhere but her hair, a raking, temperatureless assertion. Not last night’s trails of fire. No, that had been Lord Vorrutyer; Lord Aral’d had his hands tied. She remembered beating Lord Aral with a rod.

She couldn’t flinch back, because it had been almost a minute. She wanted him to turn around so she could see his back—figure out if that hadn’t been, somehow, a dream, if he hadn’t simply crawled under the sheets when Vorrutyer was done, and touched and kissed her. That wouldn’t be bad. She had been so tired, she thought, and couldn’t tell if it was only because she was tired now that she thought so. This stiff, wakening tiredness, which couldn't now give way again to sleep. This tiredness was what she fed like a wire through the sleeve of long sleep, to link the cold, bruised villain she had been back to herself. When Vorrutyer had finished—

But he hadn’t been through. _He_ shook her then, not Aral, because Aral had just arrived. He asked for her help. Well, go on, won’t you, he’d said. Make yourself useful. Slugabed.

Lord Aral had been drunk. He was kissing Vorrutyer, trying to dance with him, and she had gotten behind him and tied his wrists, which he liked. She had known how—why shouldn’t she have?—his limp cold hands, like game. Poultry.

She hadn’t expected anything else of this job. When she came to serve the young lord in the capital she’d heard all the stories, which were old news in the district. The money was worth it. It was worth it, joked her friend Helene, just to see them all in uniform—brave young men!

More seriously, her friend had advised her that, once disgraced, she could appeal to Lord Aral for funds—he was as reliable in his belief in housemaids’ pre-existing virtue as Ges Vorrutyer was in cheerful disregard for it. Aral could dissuade Ges from involving a woman in their games more than once. Once, because the first time, he could never seem to bring himself to doubt the girls’ enthusiasm. He respected virtue, but he respected passion, too.

Kind Lord Aral. He was waiting for her to get up and dress. Now would be the time to burst into tears. Or if she couldn’t manage that—and she didn’t think she could, she hadn’t been disgraced, Lord Vorrutyer had done nothing, exactly, that might risk— If she couldn’t manage that, then now would be the time to say, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want it, my lord, please, I’m so sorry—she would have to pretend to think he’d been tricked too, beaten unwilling—

She bent forward and picked up her shift. She thought, Now. And then, Now. Then her mind wandered a little, and she found herself tangled up in the shift, arms over her head, and he was helping her. So she couldn’t tell him then. Anyway, she was starting to amend what she needed to say: I’m sorry, Lord Aral, but there’s been a misunderstanding; I was, I am, I was very afraid.

She pushed her head through the neck and saw him. He had let go of the sleeves, he had bent over too and was reaching for her shoes. Why on earth her shoes? His back was netted with welts. His back was like a humble sort of painting, a bad forest. It was early morning but the lamps were all on, the light hadn’t changed, it was still shining off his curls. The only change was out the window, pale that had been grey.

She said, “I—” 

He straightened up. No furtive resignation, no tensing for a plea; he looked at her with open curiosity, as he had looked when, winded, she let her arm fall. The rod cupped in the wound. All the women he had ruined, and this was how he looked? She felt immediately that he would have understood her had she spoken; had she only spoken quickly enough, and clearly, he’d understand anything. 

She said something more—a little. In her confusion Standard abandoned her, she resorted to French. Of course it was too late. It was too late the moment she got to picking her shift off the floor, running cloth through her fingers, feeling how light silence was while the words squeezed up within her. Silence a fine, airy material, too weightless to throw off, so that words escaped through the top of her head rather than being pressed out of her mouth.

And silence would have been better than these noises, although part of her was determined to speak. Was still proud of the touching words she had put in order.  She kissed him. She _was_ proud—of what—of jittery soreness and the absence of pain. Her eyes seemed stretched, receiving too much, bearing it precariously, and the stretch remained when she closed them. He pushed her away so that she had to open them again, she could get no rest.

He stared at her. Just married, of course, with a bridegroom’s confidence. He was gentle, puffed-up, fatter than Vorrutyer. She could never ask him for anything. If she cried, he’d smell tears of gratitude.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said, slurring. He wasn’t hungover; he was still drunk. He had listened with such patience, the only point at which long practice showed. “I know it must seem strange—shocking. You’re from the country, aren’t you, his district…”

“What time is it?”

“Don’t worry, I know you’ve got to go, that’s why I made sure to… But as I was saying—”

How had she overlooked this most obvious problem, dreaming? She needed to report in to the housekeeper at 0600. The fog was so thick. She scrambled for a clock, anything that told time, and got Lord Aral, instead, his hands trapping hers. “Don’t be embarrassed. Marie. It was _fun_ , wasn’t it?” He smiled soppily at her with blood caked in his front teeth. “I know I had a good time.”

His chronometer was still on his wrist. It was half past nine. The silence seemed to turn into the silence that would follow a scream, with no help from her. “Why would you even wake me?” she blurted. “Why would you bother—why—” She got her hands free and got ahold of her dress and decided not to look for her stockings. He was asking a question, which she didn’t hear; there was dull surprise in his voice. He certainly didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but he had gotten to his knees. She imagined Lord Vorrutyer behind him, wrapping a lean arm around his stomach. 

But Marie, Marie!

It came to her that maybe he was thinking of his wife.


End file.
